It's not good to hide your wounds
by snail-butt
Summary: If Obito and Naruto can get punched in the chest with chidori and survive because of their tailed beasts why can't Rin? Rin lives founds a Madara-hate club.
1. Chapter 1

When Rin wakes up it is damp and cold, she can feel grass against the skin on the back of her neck. She jerks herself up, noting the surprising lack of sudden pain, and opens her eyes to search for the Kiri nin that had just ambushed them. She can't see a thing, even when she blinks several times. As the memory of kakashi's chidori comes back to her, that was why she was on the ground, she had decided to-

Rin reaches for the gorey entrance wound on her chest that adrenaline and iryo-ninjustu reflex must have numbed. There is nothing there but the untorn cloth of her shirt. The fatal wound on her rib cage is gone and she suddenly realizes the seal's awful compulsion is too. She must have succeeded then, Kohana would be safe. She flops back into the long grass and breathes out, she never imaged the pure land would be so cold and dark but at least she is no longer being forced towards her home knowing she carried it's destruction inside her like a ticking seal tag.

She opens her eyes and her chakra senses to feel around her for other people, she cant feel a single one. As she lies in the grass staring into the darkness and stretching her focus into the emptiness around her, her eyes adjust and she begins to pick out lighter and darker patches above her, trees against sky she realizes. It must be particularly densely clouded dark night, there are no stars above her and the trees almost look black.

As she squints at the dark sky she realizes that the damp and cold she felt when she woke up are part of a large cold charka presence that she didn't notice because it stretches all around her and is very faint in any one spot, just like the groves of hashirama trees that she used to practice her sensing on because they were so faint. She sits up again, suddenly unnerved, the presence is very similar to hashirama trees only it feels like clinging moisture surrounding her on all sides not soothing green she can trace back to a single tree.

For a second she thinks she might be inside a huge suiton technique and she jumps up and turns around. As she does the trees in front of her are eclipsed by a blinding bright disc that slides into being as if it were and eye being opened. the light from the disc is blinding to her unadjusted eyes and it takes her a second to realize that it really is an eye, a single eye set in huge armoured face. Was this thing behind her the whole time?! Rin scrambles back agew steps, panic and shock taking over. The huge head draws back.

"peace little shinobi" the spikes on the creature's jaw shift as it speaks "your heart and left lung were punctured, you must not waste energy"

"The Sanbi..." Rin breaths as she finally recognizes the chakra and the red ringed golden eye. The old woman that had been dragged into the ritual room covered in chain and sealing tags had eyes exactly like those. Rin had been tied down on the floor already but she had seen the other woman be chained down across from her. This creature's chakra was the same as the overpowering nature chakra she had felt in that room

"I am Isobu" the Sanbi speaks again "you are on the brink of death, come closer and I will lend you my chakra"

Rin takes another step back "You can't! I have to die to protect my village. I can't fight the seals compulsion"

"If you die I will be dragged along with you and i am not so bitter as some as my brothers and sisters that I wish pain on my jinchuriki just for the part they unwillingly play in my imprisonment. There must be way for us to trick the seal, surely you sensed your friend is almost out of chakra and you two are surrounded by enemy nin, why would they be chasing you if the seal was unbeatable"

"Kakashi-" Rin shivers, remembering watching kakashi fall to the ground next to her

"Yes you must save your friend" Isobu raises his head and she can see the red skin of their neck

Rin considers for a minute, hands twisting her apron. Isobu obviously has a stake in her continued survival but they're right about would it do to him to wake up and realize what she had used him to do? What if the kirinin got to him and he never woke up at all? She can sense the location of all the seals on her and she can tell it's the one on her heart that is forcing her toward Kohana. It must have been at least partially damaged by Kakashi's first and with her medical knowledge and what Kushina-nee has taught her about fuinjutsu maybe she can open up her chest and overwrite the seal if she can use the bijuu chakra to heal herself as she does.

Finally Rin steps forward "I want to save Kakashi, But I won't just hand over control to you! My Nee-san has a demon too and I know how manipulative they can be"

"I told you i'm not like my brothers and sisters, if you don't accept my chakra you will die and and your friend will most likely follow you" Isobu's Huge eye blinks, Rin thinks they look frustrated.

"I still need some kind of guarantee you aren't lying to me" rin shoots back

"Haven't you noticed there are no bars between us, Your seal isn't like the cages i've been in before, if I wanted I could devour your consciousness right now and take control, but I'd still be trapped in your mortal shell and the seals on it would still suppress my will' Isobu's rumbling voice gets louder, they're definitely frustrated now

That's enough to convince Rin, this seal is clearly a cage for both of them "okay i'll take your chakra" Rin shuffles through the grass toward isobu's huge jaw. Isobu lowers their head again until their jaw rests on the ground at rins feet, she's now eye level with the tailed beast

"Put your hand on me" Isobu rumbles and rin complies

As she places her hand between Isobu's eyes she feels a concentrated rush of cold nature chakra flood her chakra coils

"When you leave our seal space you must stay still or my chakra will turn you coral" Isobu shell rumbles under hand as they speak

"What?! That kind of thing doesn't happen to Kushina-nee when she channels her Bijuu's chakra!"

"I can tell you have a water affinaties, my chakra is also water so you body won't be able to balance out my chakra with its own, unless you've mastered controlling nature chakra?"

Rin shakes her head mutely.

"Just stay still then, you probably shouldn't be moving with wounds like your's anyway"

As Isobu talks Rin can feel them pushing her out off the seal space. She takes one last breath of damp air and then the pain returns and she can't breathe at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Rin tries her best to stay still, she doesn't even open her eyes even though she desperately wants to check on Kakashi. she can sense Isobu's chakra knitting her chest back together. Her ribs are painfully popping back into place and the blood that had filled her chest cavity and her punctured lung is being drawn out somehow.

She reaches out with her chakra sense looking for Kakashi's familiar signature but she can't sense past the storm of bijuu chakra surrounding her. She feels her left lung reinflate and does her best not to take desperate gulps of air, not sure if the rise and fall of her chest will unbalance the nature chakra.

Finally the chambers of her heart that were punctured seal themselves and her heart falls back into the proper rhythm. Rin feels for the control seal she knows was put on her heart and finds it half destroyed. Its loose ends are wiggling like horrible worms looking for the parts the seal that Kakashi destroyed. But the seal is still active, if weaker. Most of Isobu's chakra has been used up regrowing her internal organs. The dregs of it move to the charred edges of the exit wound between her shoulder blades and the entrance wound on the left side of her chest.

She can sense the remaining chakra regrowing as much muscle as it can before moving to on to disinfecting and stimulating skin growth. Rin feels fresh scar tissue stretch across both areas, and Isobus chakra fades from her system through she can still feel them in the seal on her stomach.

She draws in a shaky breathe and holds it. When nothing happens she takes more gulps of air and opens her eyes, taking stock of her surrounds. Kakashi is collapsed at her feet, his back is rising falling slightly and she can feel his weak chakra. She can see the slumped forms of the kiri nin all around her. she's surrounded by strange pale trees she could swear weren't there before. Some of the Kiri nin are impaled on the trees branches, what little of her surrounding she can see without moving are covered in their blood The sky is still dark, it was night when she stepped in front of Kakashi's Chidori but now the full moon has moved up in the sky. It hangs above her in as she lies on the cold rock, still damp with her own blood

She can't feel any remaining wounds but shes a medic nin and she knows adrenaline can hide the bodies vital warnings, she doesn't want to aggravate anything by moving around just yet. So she tries sensing instead of sitting up and looking around. As she stretches out her senses she notes that the Kiri nin closest to her are dead, their body's empty chakraless husks. Further away behind her she can feel the weak signatures of a few battle exhausted nin.

There is a strange chakra signature over there as well. Rin can't tell if it is one person or two. one signature curls around the other almost obscuring it from view, the outer chakra feels alot like a hasirama tree but much stronger. The inner chakra feels like a person, a fire affinity maybe, but she can't get a good read on either signature. It's also moving around so it can't be person hiding inside of strange hashirama tree.

She feel mokuton chakra all around her, little spots here and there on the battlefield, as she focus on the strange signature she feels another mokuton patch appear near one of the Kiri nin and the nin's chakra flickers and then disappears as they die. Something is using mokuton to kill the Kiri hunter nin, Hashirama is long dead and no one else has ever had that Kekkei Genkai, not even Hashirama's children.

Rin reminds herself that she knows better than to trust her sensory abilities a hundred percent. They are useful but there are tons of techniques that can trick or block them, as Minato-sensei often reminds her. This must be one of them she just can't tell what kind yet. There's no way she's sensing mokuton from anything but a Hashirama tree and she's in grass country, hundreds of miles away from Kohana

She needs to get visual on that strange signature, she reaches for her chest trying to access the remaining damage before she tries to look behind her. The shirt there is ripped and damp with blood, as is the mesh armor beneath it.

Rin can feel a bumpy keloid scar underneath the fist sized hole in her clothes. It's sore when she presses on it but she doesn't feel a trace of pain when she breaths, it's as if she wasn't just missing half of her left lung minutes ago, so she's probably ok to move.

She's about sit up when she feels the strange signature approaching, The last of the Kiri nin's chakra had disappeared while she was accessing Isobu's Healing. Rin freezes, they're close enough that they can probably she her and she still has no idea what technique is making their chakra look like that.

She closes her eyes again, hoping she can play dead, her hand if still covering the healed skin on her chest. she knows all too well that most people die with their eyes open but hopefully whoever that strange double chakra signature belongs to won't look to close. She breathes as shallowly as she can. Rin's never had to try this before but shes a shinobi, her pride doesn't prevent her from playing possum and Minato-sensei made sure all his student knew how to do it.

She waits trying not give away any signs of life while she keeps her chakra sense trained on the double signature approaching her. The signature comes to a stop right beside her

"Now I see.. I'm in hell" says a horribly familiar voice from above her. Rin can't quite hide her flinch. Maybe she really is dead, or delirious in the hospital. She's heard her best friend's voice many times in the two years since she held his hand as he died, he's never said that before though.

"R-rin" there's Obito's voice again, first the mokuton and know this. Something must be wrong with her senses. She feels wood brush her neck,right on her carotid artery. Her eyes snap open.

She sees obito's face looming over her. It's not the face she sees in her nightmares every night smiling up at her as she scopes his eyeball out, still unwilling to show her his pain even in his last moments. He only has one eye but his empty eye socket is mercifully sewed shut, not bloody and staring at her accusingly. He has extensive scarring on the side of his face that is normally covered by the bolder and his hair is longer too. She can't tell what he's wearing but its not orange and he has some kind of white stuff wrapped around his neck.

"Obito, what-" Rin reaches for him, the fresh scar aches as it pulls but Rin barely notices, Obito is solid in her arms

"Rin! You really are alive" Obito says from beside her ear. He sounds choked up, she's not surprised, she's already crying into his now shoulder length hair. Maybe she's beaten him to the tears for once

"How? I saw-" the wood thing on her neck was his hand somehow, she realizes as he shifts it to hug her back, whatever the white thing around his neck is it also feels like wood.

"Isobu healed me, Kiri caught me and made me a jinchuriki, they were gonna use Isobu to destroy konoha" she sobs into his shoulder "sweet sage! how are _you_ alive?"

"Some kinda creepy plant person pulled me out from under the cave in and brought me to another creep who made me part plant person" Obito mutters, his voice muffled by Rin's shoulder.

"Hey! Brat-" says another voice in Rin's ear, it's higher that Obito's and has a strange ring to it.

"What the hell?" Rin jerks back a bit in surprise but doesn't let go of Obito

"I'm guruguru" says the voice again, rin has drawn back enough that she can look around but she can't find the source of the voice "who the brat forgot to mention was the only reason he could get to you and then kill all those Kiri nin"

"I was getting to you" Obito interrupts

" This is very touching reunion and everything but the you surviving wasn't in Madara's plans"


	3. Chapter 3

The voice is coming from that thing on Obito neck, Rin tenses and Obito jerks himself out of Rins arms and grabs at the wood around his neck.

"Chill brat, I only meant that the hivemind definitely knows she's alive and there probably a zetsu informing the old man about that right now" Guruguru reassures Obito and he slumps in relief, releasing his hold on the strange creature he seems to be sharing a body with. "You know I can't disobey a direct order from the zestu mind and we only have a few minutes before that order gets dispatched" Guruguru contines.

"I like you brat so I'll give you some little tips before Madara realizes what I'm doing and shuts my mouth, you two have seal problems. Completely unrelated but I happen to have heard there that Mito's best student was visiting his teammate in Nagai, Thats a little town in Ishi no kuni with a big red light district if you didn't know" Rin sucks in a breath he's talking about JIraya of the Sannin and if he's talking about Jiraiya then the team mate must be Tsunade-hime.

Tsunade-hime has been Rin's idol since she first read about her while looking over her clan's old scrolls. Rin's great-grandmother had taught the Senju princess some supplemental lesson in medical ninjutsu until Tsunade-Hime quickly surpassed her. Soon it was Tsunade teaching Nohara-sama and the old woman had recorded many instances of Tsunade-Hime's genius in her journals. Rin had dreamed of meeting the Senju princess for many years.

"When I separate from you Obito the zetsu matter graft Madara replaced your leg with if probably going to slough right off, it didn't take as well as the arm and you really overdid it today" Rin finally manages to drag her thoughts away from her idol to refocuses on the conversation and sits up alarmed.

"Can't you two just stay together then?" Rin asks Guruguru.

"Definitely not, weren't you listening! you need to get rid of me before the memory of what I told you makes it back to the hive mind" Obito flinches.

"Anyway the brats not going to be able to walk but he does have those fancy eyes, what were they known for again? Genjutsu that's right. Your seal forces you towards your home, yes? I bet my brat could make you think any direction was the way home if he stared at you hard enough" the wood around Obito's neck shiver and curls anxiously

"I'm running out of time" Guruguru says "Brat, I gotta separate from you now. Show me that fireball jutsu you were always bragging about" the creature sounds almost wistful, a sudden switch from the attitude of a few moments ago.

The branches surrounding Obito's head shrink away beneath the shapeless robe he's wearing. What Rin is assuming is is Guruguru slinks out from under Obito's robe followed by a spray of arterial blood that sends Rin scrambling for her medpack.

Guruguru reforms into a vaguely man shaped creature with birch bark like skin and a swirl where his face should be, he leans down and ruffles Obito's hair before stepping back and throwing up a victory sign.

Obito hitches a sob as Guruguru's hand leaves his head, then he runs through familiar hand signs and and exhales a plume of fire right at the plant creature. The creature catches fire quickly and unlike the other people Rin has seen burned alive he stays completely silent and still as his wood body crackles and his mockery of a face is obscured by smoke.

Obito is crying again, he'd held back the tears until he'd completed Guruguru's last request. Rin is reminded of herself transplanting her best friends eye with unshaking hands, she had swallowed her sobs because she need to see to complete the procedure.

She cautiously wraps Obito in a one armed hug as she pours difectant from her medpack over the heavily bleeding stump of his left leg. He turn and sobs into her shoulder for second time that day

Rin calls up her mystical palm jutsu with her free hand as she rubs sootheing circles on Obito's boony back. The familiar green doesn't cover her fingers as it normally would. She tries again checking her 're fine, fuller than normal, but no medical chakra surrounds her hand.

'_I'm sorry Rin-san that might be because of me, having biju chakra suddenly added to your coils must have damaged your chakra control' _Isobu says from the back of her head. Rin jumps a bit, she didn't know they could do that

'_Jinchuriki can't do Iryoninjutsu?' _She thinks back.

'_I've never had one that could, It might be impossible for someone who was made a Jinchuriki later in life especially since we aren't suited for each other'_ The Sanbi replies sounding apologetic.

Rin realizes she's shaking. Obito is still bleeding out all over her. She quickly grabs gauze from her med pouch and applies pressure to Obito's profusely bleeding wound. She'll just have to do this they way she would if she was out of chakra, she can think about the ramifications of her once her miraculously revived best friend is no longer losing blood. She has to remove her hand from Obito's back to start wrapping the tourniquet.

"Rin?" Obito's looking at her questioningly, he knows how she jumps at the chance to use medical ninjutsu, especially on him.

"Holding a Bijuu prevents the use of Iryo Ninjutsu, apparently" she says, trying to keep the bitterness out her voice. She should be happy, she's had Obito returned to her

"Oh, Rin" He says and she kind of hates the way he's looking at her. She's fine, she's happy. Kakashi's alive and she is not being forced to destroy Kohana anymore.

She looks down at the wound she's treating and applies a second layer of bandages, they can't afford to leave a blood trail behind. Not after Obito's friend sacrificed himself to give them a head start against this Madara guy.

Lucky Obito doesn't continue, he knows her too well

'_What do mean not suited for each other?'_ she asks the Sanbi as she uses her chakra sense to check Obito over for other wounds

'_Jinchuuriki are chosen because they have the opposite nature affinity as the Bijuu they are meant to imprison, but we have the same affinity, remember what I told you earlier about our combined chakra being unbalanced' _Isobu explains.

Rin starts to formulate a response, then stops as she senses the seal on Obito's heart. It feels the same as the one in her own chest, although she can tell that it's been layered on several times.

"You have seal on your heart!"

"Fucking Uchina Madara" Obito swears

"Uchina Madara! I thought it was just some cave creep with the same name!"


	4. Chapter 4

"How the hell is Uchiha Madara still alive?! the records say the Shodaime ripped his stomach open all the way to the spine!" Rin yelps.

"I don't know how in he managed to survive long enough to crawl to cave he's been hiding in, but he's got roots connecting him to this creepy statue that's feeding his chakra or something. so he can't leave the cave he's in a least. but he's got those creepy zetsu minions. Guruguru and Shiro were the only ones I ever could get to show any personality..." Obito trails off looking at the smoldering remains of the tree like person in front of him.

Rin had moved to Kakashi's unconscious form to check him over for injuries as they talked. He was fine except for Chakra exhaustion and some first degree burns on one of his for arms.

"we've got to move, that zetsu hive mind knows our location, right?" Rin says turning back to Obito. He nods and Rin starts gently pulling Obito upright.

"wrap your arms around my neck,I've got to figure out how carry you and Kakashi" she says.

"Why are we bringing that jerk? he tried to kill you!" he shouts.

"I jumped in front of his attack! I asked him to kill me and he refused" Rin tells him.

"He's still a Konoha Shinobi"

"What wrong with that? I'm a Konoha Shinobi!" Rin tries not to shout at him, but she's frustrated and confused. Obito recoils from her when as soon as the woods leave her mouth, suddenly flopping back to the ground.

"Sage! I forgot, Oji-san says-" he's looking at her with a disgust she's never seen on his face before.

"You mean Madara?!" Rin interrupts advancing on him angrily.

"How can you follow those leaf scum?! sweet sage, I didn't even notice your head band!" Obito scoots back, away from her.

"You're one of those leaf scum Obito!" Rin stops advancing and crosses her arms, frustrated.

"No I'm not! They abandoned me" Obito shouts with a rage she's never heard from her best friend before, even in her night mares. Rin freezes, he's right, she abandoned him under those rocks. She should have gone back, retrieved his body at least.

Obito's eyes are still trained on her headband, he's it looking at it with disgust and rage. She can't stomach it any more, quickly she unties her headband and throws it into the bushes.

"I'm sorry Obito" she says.

"Not you.. " he seems to relax as soon as her headband is out of sight, but she still doesn't dare approach him yet. Rin doesn't know what to say, her teammate who wanted to be Hokage seems to suddenly despise Konoha as much a seasoned Kumo nin.

Then again it's not that sudden, she's missed two years of his life. Two years Uchiha Madara had him captive. That creep must have brainwashed- It must be the seal! She knows her seal can control her mind enough to force her toward Kohana and his has so many layers. It must be some kind of mind control seal. She's heard of genjutsu being combined with sealing before and Kushina-nee has always told her that there's no limit's when it comes to fuinjutsu.

She decides not to try to persuade Obito about Kohana, it's not like she can return there until she gets her seal fixed anyway, at which point his freaky mind control seal should be removed any way.

But she still needs to figure out what to do about Kakashi, he doesn't have any pressing injures and he'd called for help as soon as he'd found her. They are terrifyingly close to the fire country border so reinforcements sound be here soon.

He'll be fine, she decides. She needs to get Obito medical attention, his leg is missing just above the knee and who knows what else Madara had done to him. Decision made Rin crouches down to talk to Obito as non-threateningly as she can.

"I'm not a Konoha Ninja right now, I'm Rin, your best friend since we were both toddlers. I was your best friend before either of us were ninja" she reminds him. Obito nods quickly.

"I wasn't ever mad at you, it's just Kohana..." Obito mutters sounding apologetic and confused.

"Ok, can I pick you up now? we've got to get out of here" Rin asks.

"Wait one sec" Obito says as he crawls over to Kakashi. Rin tenses but Obito only grabs Kakashi's forehead protector. Before Rin can figure out what he's doing he's scratched a straight line through the Konoha symbol with a sharp twig that come out of nowhere.

" Obito! what-" Rin cuts herself off. Kakashi's ok, his eyes are closed so the borrowed sharingan probably isn't draining his chakra anymore. If this reassures Obito she won't question it.

She can sense fire chakra at the edge of her range, moving directly towards them. They need to get out of here, Obito will freak if he sees Konoha anbu and even worse, he's tying the scratched headband around his head. The anbu would take him for a missing-nin.

"Obito please cast the genjutsu so we can go" Rin pleads.

Obito stare at her for a second, then his single sharingan eye bleeds to life. Rin tries not to fight it as she feels the genjutsu take hold. Obito's never been the best at genjutsu but this one feels sturdy.

"Ok, put your arms around my neck" Rin cautiously shuffles closer and this time Obito complies.

Rin hitches her arms around Obito's legs as he clings to her front. She straightens up and takes one last look at Kakashi before shifting Obito into a piggyback carry, careful not to jostle the stump of his injured left leg. Then she takes off into the woods.

A/N: I wrote this chapter while hella drunk, please review and let me know if you spot any mistakes!


	5. Chapter 5

Rin runs straight to the Rain country border, only taking a break to re-bandage Obito's leg when it started bleeding through the bandages.

She pauses behind a log in a small grove of trees that provides her with a bit with reassuring cover and familiarity. Quickly she unwraps his blood soaked bandages and soaks fresh ones with disinfectant before pressing them onto his wound. She quickly triple wraps his leg and re does the tourniquet as tight as she dares. Then she Crouches down in front on him so he can get back onto her back.

Finally she reaches the river that marks the Ame border. A few bodies are floating down stream, no doubt the result of the skirmishes that still over run rain country despite the fact that the third war had officially ended two years ago

She'd already waded through a few streams to erase their scent trail, but this one was much deeper although it is slow moving.

Rin considers trying to water walk, but she knows her chakra control is almost non-existent. She doesn't want to risk exposing Obito's injury to the dirty water so she gently shakes him awake and hoists him onto her shoulders with her already aching arms.

He clings to her hair painfully as she wades into the river. The water comes up to her waist at its deepest point. It's cold but Rin knows its washing away the blood that had incrusted her skin and clothes. She makes it up the muddy bank on the other side and resettles Obito on her back, he grumbles something uniteeligle at her and soon he's fallen back asleep.

Rin's terribly worried for him but at least he seems to be sleeping normally and not passed out from blood loss.

Soon it starts to rain, a freezing downpour that has Obito shivering on her back and unable to sleep. Uncharacteristically, he doesn't complain or whine.

As soon as she can she steals oilskins and a set of dry clothes for both of them. She has to sneak into a civilian town to do it, but she can tell from the position of the few stars she can see through the rain clouds that is around 3 in the mourning.

She keeps her senses open for non civilian chakra signatures as she sneaks into the richest looking home in the town and steals what she needs from the closets and cabinets.

Obito whispers angrily at her about the morals of stealing and it lifts Rin's spirits even though it increases their chances of getting caught.

They get away cleanly and she reminds Obito that she'd stolen from the most well off people in that town. He hisses back that everyone in that town was living in terrible conditions. Rin can't disagree with him and she decides that if they get out of this mess she go back and bring the people in that town food and supplies to more that replace the amount she'd stolen.

Obito had managed to make her feel guilty but they'd really need clean water and she was worried that Obito would catch a fever or get an infection without protection from the damp and cold.

She stops in the first cave she gain find that's protected from the rain and not swamped in mud.

Rin lays down one of the oilskins on the damp floor of the cave and setts Obito down on it. Then she hands him the other oilskin she'd stolen, the heavily patched women's yukata and canteen of clean water she'd taken from the house. He takes them without complaint, she'd told him about her intention to return the thvillage after all.

She stands guard at the cave entrance, carefully keeping her back to him while he gets changed. Her best friend had always been terribly embarrassed to be naked around her, unusual since most ninja didn't care about such things.

She turns around quickly when she hears the rush of flames and catches him burning the robe he was was wearing, already fully dressed and wrapped in the second oilskin.

"Obito! You need to save your chakra and try to rest and heal" Rin scolds him. He scowls and looks away from her.

She ducks back into the cave and unties her weapons pouch, handing it to Obito.

"Can you keep watch for a bit and I need to get changed and then meditate real quick"

"Meditate?" he ask her, looking away from the smoldering remains of his robe and back at her in his surprise.

"I've got to talk to Isobu" Rin explains. And hopefully fix her aching arms and the ankle she'd sprained, but she wasn't going to worry him by telling him about that.

"The Sanbi?" he asks

"I think they prefer being called Isobu" she says pulling off the tattered remains of her shirt. She's still got her mesh armor on but he looks away with a blush and tightens his grip on her weapons poach.

She shruges and unties her apron before striping off her muddiy leg armor and her ninja sandals. It would be useful to be able to be mistaken for civilians so she'd taken a pair of straw sandals from the house. They would probably give her blisters but she was hoping her Bijuu cold heal those. She could hide her clan markings under the hood of the oil skin as long as nobody got too close.

She keeps her mesh shirt and spandex shorts on but makes sure they're fully hidden by the large Happi she'd stolen. She reties her apron over the happi, it was ripped but the river had washed most of the blood off and she wasn't willing to part with her medic's apron. She'd worked hard to earn it, even if she might never be able to use Iryo Ninjutsu again an and didn't deserve to wear it.

She slips her feet into the straw sandals and stuffs her ninja sandals into the bottom of her medpack where they they barely fit. She bundles her other discarded clothes into a pile, she'd bury them in the mud when she got the chance. It might not prevent the zestu chasing them from finding her clothes, but hopefully it would slow them down while they wasted time diggin her them up.

She glances at Obito, he'd gotten a kunai out of her weapons pouch and was holding it with one hand while the other held his Yukata shut. She'd forgotten to steal anything to serve as an obi. Quickly Rin rips a strip of cloth out off the sleeve of the shirt she'd taken off and wrings the water out before chucking it at him. He almost doesn't catch it and looks at it in surprise for a second before realizing what it was and tying it around his waist.

She hands him the small bag of rice she'd taken from the had felt particularly guilty about taking it but she hadn't seen any wildlife as they passed through Ame and they couldn't really afford to take the time to cook meat any way.

Obito needed food and hydration to help his body recover from the loss of a leg. She didn't. Hopefully Isobu cold heal dehydration. Rin figured it was safe to assume they could if they could heal a chidori wound straight to the chest.

"Remember the dry rice will expand in your stomach" Rin reminds him. Once she's asurtanted he is eating and keeping and eye on the entrance to the cave, she sits down on the wet floor and assumes a meditative pose, legs crossed and eyes close. Taking a deep breath Rin tries to reach for Isobu's presence in the back of her mind.


	6. Chapter 6

After few seconds of sitting still (as she'd learned to do while practicing sensing as an academy student) and a few deep breaths Rin finds herself opening her eyes in the damp grassy clearing.

This time she can see her surroundings much more clearly. She looks up and sees the sky is only partially cloudy, a thin crescent moon hangs above her and she can see a few stars through the shifting clouds. For moment she can't find Isobu but then she looks to her left and sees them partially submerged in a large pond she hadn't seen before. They're curled up with their tails almost completely covering their face.

Rin smiles at that, they look like one of the stray cats back in Kohana. She approaches them, the long grass parting in her wake. As she does Isobu seems to wake up and shifts their tails away from their face.

"You shouldn't give out my name so freely, It's probably fine that you've mentioned it to Obito-san, But I only give out my name to the jinchuriki I'm willing to extend my corporation to, it's a bit of an open secret these days but its still an important gift" Isobu rests their head on the rocky shore of the pond in front of her as they talk.

Rin thinks this over, she feels a little guilty for telling Obito so casually now. Come to think off it Kushina-nee had never mentioned the name of her Bijuu although she hadn't talked about her condition that often. It was supposed to be a secret after all. She'd only mentioned it to Rin because she was part of Minato-sensei's team.

"Sorry" Rin says awkwardly, not sure what to else to say. Isobu blinks at her for a second. They don't have a very expressive face, she wishes she was better at reading it.

"It's not a big deal Rin-san, it feels like half of Kiri knows my name some days"

"I won't tell anyone else without getting your permission first in the future" Rin says anyway. Isobu looks a her slienty for a moment, then they slowly open their other eye.

"I heard what you were thinking about dehydration" Isobu says before Rin can comment on what they've just done. " You can't count on me to supply your body with all your needs, I can do it but it's much healthier for you to eat and drink as you normally should. Your body needs water I'd just be repairing your organs as they shut down" Isobus voice has a lightly scolding tone. Rin tries not to blush,she's a medic nin usually she's the one scolding others.

It takes her a second to realise she's not a medic-nin any more. Even though she had plenty of chances to be reminded of it, what with her in inability to take care of Obito, the realization feels as stingingly fresh as it had when she'd first found out about that particular repercussion of being a Jinchuuriki.

"I can refill your chakra reserves though. You just need to mold fire chakra then combine it with some of my own chakra then just release it back into your coils" Isobu says like Rin has the first clue how to do any off those things.

Rin knows a few water jutsu, the only one she's any good at it is water shuriken but she doesn't know any fire jutsu and she's certainly never thought of molding two kinds of chakra together. She also doesn't have a clue how to borrow chakra from Isobu in any other form than the large donation they'd used to heal her

"Would I need to stay still while I do this?" Rin asks, mostly rhetorically, she has a pretty good idea of what Isobu's answer will be.

"Yes Rin-san" Isobu says, fulfilling Rin's expectations "but the point is to balance my natural water chakra with your human fire chakra, so once you combine them they should be in balance and you can move as much as you want"

"That would be really useful if I could figure it out" Rin mutters.

"It's fairly simple" Isobu tells her.

"Not for us humans" she informs them. Isobu binks at her again

Rin still doesn't have a clue how to release molded chakra back into her system but she does have an idea of where she can learn a fire jutsu.

"Just one last question, would you mind healing my sprained ankle?"Rin asks

"I think you should try drawing on my chakra for healing without needing to enter your seal space, if thats ok?" Isobu seems a little hesitant to suggest something to her, its little funny since few hours ago they had been practically shouting at her to live.

"That's a good idea, I should be practicing that for the reserve filing thing you were talking about anyway" Rin tells them, "anyway I guess I'll go try that, Bye Isobu-san" she waves at them a little awkwardly.

"I can talk to you telepathically at any time" Isobu's voice rumbles a little more than normal, she thinks they are trying to hold back laughter.

Rin pulls her consciousness back from the seal and opens her eyes in the damp cave. Obito's still in the same position but he looks at over at her when he sees her eyes open.

"I still have to try one more thing, we'll be out of this cave in a minute, sorry" she explains before shutting her eyes again.

She feels for Isobu's presence again, careful not to to fall into the mental space her and Isobu share. Once she's found their chakra within herself she hesitantly pulls on it a little as she would pull on her own chakra to mold a jutsu. It rises to her call surprisingly easily and she separates off a little bit that she pictures as being just enough to fill the hole in kunai handle.

That may have been a bit of overkill in hindsight. The chakra rushes to heal not only her sprained ankle but the sore soles of her feat, a few scratches she'd gotten with running through briars, her aching arm muscles and a bruise she hadn't even realised was their.

She hear Obito yelp and she snaps opens her eyes, letting go of the nature chakra. He's fine, there's no one else in the cave, but he's looking at her with shock

"Your chakra, You like glowed orange for a second there" Obito says.

"Isobu and I were just trying something out, it worked really well actually" Rin stretches her arms above her head and uncrosses her legs. She feels as well rested as if she'd just gotten out of her bed in the chunin quarters back in konoha. better even, considering she hadn't had an night of sleep uninterrupted by nightmares in the last two years.

She checks her reserves, their half full, but usually they would have run empty after the first hour of using short distance shunshin over and over, not to mention sloppily reinforcing her arms with chakra in order to carry Obito comfortably. It seems like having Isobu sharing her body has stretched her own chakra supply.

Satisfied that they're ready to move she goes outside to bury her ruined clothes. Once she's done with that she goes back in side and crouch's done so Obito can climb back onto her back. She grabs the second oil skin from the floor and draps it over both of them. She checks the cave for any signs they'd been there. She kicks the ashes Obito had left behind around a bit and then takes off into the rain.

Rin considers asking Obito to teach her how to mold fire chakra, but now that he's warm and protected from the rain he's gone back to sleep. He's snoring into her hair and Rin finds comfort in the familiar sound as she runs through the muck of rain country.


	7. Chapter 7

By the next day Obito has come down with a fever. His sleep becomes restless as he struggles to wiggle out of the two layers of oilskins she covered him in. She stops again and shakes him awake, his's disoriented and bleary -not good signs.

Rin contains her panic as she tries to bring his fever down with medication from her heavily stocked med pack but by the time they've crossed into stone country he's passed out, Whether from blood loss or fever she didn't dare try to stop to try and ascertain.

She books it the last few miles to Nagai. Luckily it's near the border. The unfamiliar treeless terian of Ishi nu kuni throws her for a loop but as long as she keeps and eye for loose rocks and hidden canyons she was fine. It was dusk when she got to Nagai and she snuck her way in as discreetly as she could, thankful for the cover of the approaching night.

She'd been worried that one or both of the Sannin would have moved on by the time she got to Nagai, but as soon as she enters the town she easily picks out two bright chakra signatures in the red light district. One was fire affinity and the other was earth with the soothing feel Rin associates with medic-nin.

She traces the earth affinity she assumes is Tsunade-hime to an upstairs room in an onsen. Rin slips through the shadows off the still bustling red light district, moving mostly on autopilot. A few people probably spot them, but hopefully they will mistake her and Obito for a couple of drunk civilians, the blood is mostly hidden by their stolen clothes after all.

Finally she makes it the back of the onsen, she pauses for a second to examine the window off the room she can tell the earth signature is in. Luckily the senju princess seems to be alone in her room except for much smaller chakra signature, a water affinity.

Rin knows she already very lucky to find Tsunade-hime separated from the crowds in the gambling halls and bars of Nagai's large red light district. She'll take her chances with the other person, if they're staying in the same room as the Slug sage they're probably fairly trustworth and hopefully loyal to Kohana.

She uses wall walking to get up to the window. It takes her a bit of thought with her suddenly much worse chakra control but she manages to do it on her first try without dropping Obito's unconscious body.

Once she gets up there she considers trying to open the window, but she can sense that is heavily trapped so she just pounds on the wall and yells until someone comes to the window. She wishes she had her Konoha headband band but at least she'd had the forethought to remove Obito's scratched headband before she tried to walk up the wall.

She pounds out in morse code -help. injured- until the shadow she can see at the window slides open the screen. It's the senju princess herself. She's already bellowing at Rin to 'stop making a racket and leave me alone' before Rin can get a single word out.

Rin is stunned for a second but she manages to shout back "Please! My best friend is dying!"

Tsunade-hime takes a look at Obito's blood soaked stump and pales "Go away, I don't do medical jobs that involve blood"

"I'm a Konoha ninja and Jinchriki! If he dies the genjutsu on me will break and I'll be forced to go back to Konoha and my seal is designed to break as soon as I get there."

Tsunade-hime gapes at her looks and looks like she's going to shout again but Rin steam roles over her, desperation feeding her confidence

"I need Jiraiya-sama's help with sealing. We both do, he has some kind of mind control seal on him and he was captured by some one who gave him strange limb replacements. Please at least let us see Jiraiya! We're on Minato's genin team, surely he will agree to help his student's genin" technically they're chunin but they're still Minato-sensei's students.

Tsunade-hime is still gaping at her. "What the hell, come in" she says after second, opening the window wider and stepping back so Rin can jump down onto the floor.

"Shizune-chan go get Jiraiya" Tsunade-hime says to the other person in the room, a girl about Rin's age with short black hair and wearing a black kimono.

"Please can you help him, I can't get his fever to go down" Rin pleads with Tsunade as she lays Obito out on the floor. Tsunade turns away, her face is still pale.

"Not a chance kid, you two are covered in blood"

"Most of this is mud" Rin mutters plucking at the happi she's wearing

"I can smell it from here, it's blood" the sannin says, she's digging around for something in her bag. Rin hopes its medical supplies but after a second the senju princess pulls out a bottle of sake and starts to drink directly from it.

Rin busies herself unwrapping Obito's bandages, his stump has already scabbed over, she doesn't see any obvious signs of infection, but the skin around his injury feels just as hot as the rest of his body.

"His injury is scabbed over, if you let me wash him off there won't be any blood" Rin turns to Tsunade-hime. The woman throws her a clean scrap of cloth and after a second, a half full canteen of water, all without so much as a glance at Rin. Rin gratefully soaks the cloth and wipes around Obito's scab carefully.

She unties the cord around his waist and pulls of the yukata he was wearing, the lower half of it was encrusted with blood. then she tears a clean piece off the sleeve and soaks it with water before pressing it onto his forehead. He's got boxer shorts on underneath but they're also inscribed with dried blood, she cuts them off carefully with a kunai then rips another clean piece of the yukata and puts it over his crotch, more for Obito's sake when he wakes up than anything else. She bundles up the blood stained clothes, wraps them in one of the oilskins and throws the bundle in the farthest corner from Tsunade-hime.

"Girl, there's a clean yukata in the bag on top of the futon, you can borrow it just get out of those clothes." The senju princess takes a break from chugging her sake to order Rin, she's still not looking at her.

Quickly Rin wipes off her muddy hands off and shuffles through the aforementioned bag till she finds the yukata, then she unties her apron and shrugs of the happi. After a second of consideration she strips off her spandex shorts, they're soaked with Obito's blood and a little of her own from three days ago.

Reluctantly she also takes off her mesh armor, she doesn't like being unprotected but she's in the same room as the strongest Kunochi in the world and Isobu will be able to heal any injury she might get.

She wipes some of the dried blood off her self with one of the last clean parts of her apron then she bundles her clothes and the weapon pouch that holds obito's headband into the second oil skin and throws them into the corner. she keeps her med pouch though.

Then she puts on the Yukata, its pale lavender that reminds her off her favorite Haori back in her dresser in Konoha. She feels tears rise in up her throat, she'd been running on nothing but adrenaline since Obito had come down with a fever, maybe even since her mission went south and she was kidnapped.

The last time she ate was in the cave two days ago, she'd shoved a few berries in her mouth and stopped to drink dirty creek water and then sit still while Isobu prevented it from poisoning her a few scant times while they were in rain country, but that hardly counted as it was not much fuel, only the bare minimum her body needed to keep functioning. She hadn't slept at all since her kidnapers had turned her loose three days ago.

Now that she's so close to getting Obito healed and her own seal looked at she can feel the adrenaline fleeing her system and leaving her exhausted and hungry.

Rin hasn't cried since that night at kannabi bridge and the last time before that was when she made her first kill, but as Tsunade-hime crouchs beside Obito's pale and now blood free body she can't stop the tears from welling up in her eyes. She sinks to her knees and cries as silently as she can while Tsunade-hime runs her green glowing hands over Obito.

She can't tell if the tears are from relief or the stresses and revelations of the last week. But the memory of the lavender haori her mother had bought for her years ago pushes her over the edge. Her mother had died when Rin was a newly minted genin, she had cried then too.

Rin wipes her eyes on the senju princess's yukata and looks up. The Tsunade-hime is frowning as she examines Obito, she's already closed up the stump of his left leg and his breathing is much more even, but she's hovering over his left arm.

"Whats wrong with him?" Rin asks, swallowing down the last of her tears.

"I already purged his system of the bacterial infection that was causing the fever, but you were right, these limb replacements are strange, their grafts, not prosthetics and they're made of something more wood-like than human flesh. This material is exactly like wood, but there's no chlorophyll or pigmentation of any kind, and the bark seems to only be growing in a few places. There's something strange about his chakra too, besides the seal on his heart I mean..." Tsunade mutters, her eyes still fixed on the patches of birch bark on Obito's upper arm and collarbone. She seems to be more taking notes out loud than talking to Rin.

Rin scoots a bit closer, examining Obito's fingernails where hard black birch fades back to papery white and begins to peel off as it gets closer to his second knuckle

"It looks like the bark has pigmentation?" Rin offers tentatively, hesitant to correct the senju princess. Tsunade-hime grunts non-comitaly and it's clear she's not listening to Rin.

Rin feels for Obito's pulse with two fingers on the inside of his barkless left wrist. She finds it almost immediately, it's strong and after fifteen seconds she can tell it's his usual resting heart rate. It's reassuringly normal and Rin find she can't bear to take her fingers away, even though she knows logically that her best friend is under the care of the best medic-nin in the world who is undoubtedly keeping track of his pulse and all his other vitals.

His pulse raises a lot of questions about the nature of his limb graft though, none of the tree's Rin's encountered have had pulses, he must have veins and arteries instead of Xylem and phloem. The artificial circulatory system in his arm must be perfectly attached to the rest of his circulatory system and she's seen him move his left arm quite often, he doesn't appear to favor it at all so there must also be an artificial nervous system. Rin turns to get try to get the senju princess's attention so she can share her observations but just as she opens her mouth the door slams open and cuts her off.

Rin whips around and jumps up into a crouch, her hand tightening around Obito's arm. Rin curses her self, she'd been too caught up in the implications of Obito's fake limb having a pulse to sense another person approaching. Luckily it's not one of the zetsu she knows have to have been tracking them or the kiri hunter-nin that had been herding toward konoha before Obito slaughtered them.

Instead Jiraya of the sannin stands in the doorway, hand still resting on the shouji he'd just thrown back. Rin can hear Shizune pursuing him down the hallway, scolding him about wearing his sandals inside


	8. Chapter 8

"Well shit" Jirayia says "those are Minato's brats alright. I was hoping they were fakes. it would be simpler that way" He sighs and comes all the way into the room. Shizune enters a few seconds later and silently slides the shouji shut behind her. "You should activate the privacy seals I gave you" Jiraya directs this at Tsunade-hime, who waves her hand at him and takes the bottle away from her mouth to reply

"We're in the middle of nowhere you paranoid asshole" She says, somehow not slurring her words despite the copious amount of sake she'd just consumed. But she tucks the bottle in the crook of her arm and makes a quick hand sign. Rin feels tags around the room activate in unison and suddenly they're surrounded by fuinjutsu barrier that glitters across the walls for a second before it fades into them.

Jiraiya sighs again and crouches down, still wearing his geta. "What's this about Jinchuriki and mind control seals?" he says to Rin. She uncurls her white knuckled fingers from Obito's arm but doesn't break contact with him.

"Kiri captured me and sealed Iso- the sanbi in me. The seal is meant to break the minute I pass through Konoha's gates. They also put some kind of seal on my heart that was forcing me to go toward Konoha but it weakened when some of it was destroyed and then Obito tricked it with Genjutsu" Rin pauses to take a breath and Jiraiya interrupts her

"Isn't Obito the one who died almost two years ago?" The toad sage asks and Rin can't hide her flich.

"He didn't die! he was kidnapped and someone put the same kind of seal on his heart too" Rin says vehemently, taking Obito's pulse again to reassure herself that he's still there

" Ok Ok.. I get the part about the Sanbi, it's not that smart to sacrifice your bijuu to wreck another village, but people have tried it before, But how the hell did you destroy part of the seal on your heart?!"

Rin tries not to growl in frustration, she wishes he would hurry up and start working on removing Obito's seal "I took a Chidori to the chest" she explains

"Oof ok that would do it, I assume your Bijuu healed you. Alright let me see the seal keeping the Sanbi in" Jiraiya shifts to sit cross legged in front of Rin.

"The Sanbi and I are fine, please look at Obito's seal first" Rin can't hide her scowl this time.

"Are you sure? Faulty Jinchuuriki seals are very dangerous"

Rin glares as hard as she can.

"geez ok, but you'll have let me get to him first" Tsunade chuckles from across the room and Rin realizes she's still crouched protectively in front of Obito.

She tries not to look sheepish as she moves to the other side of Obito's still form and takes his flesh hand. Jiraya shuffles forward and puts a hand on the skin above Obito's heart. Rin can feel him gently flaring his Chakra to sense the seal beneath the skin.

"Do you have paper? I need to map the seal before can figure out how to safely remove it" he asks Tsunade-hime, who's gone back to chugging sake. She nods to shizune who start riffing through contents of the Tsunade's bag. Finally the girl dumps everything out onto the futon and pulls a few sheets of paper and a fountain pen out of the resulting pile.

Jiraya takes the pen and paper without looking up from Obito's chest. He lays the paper beside him and begins to sketch with one hand while the other remains on Obito. Rin tries not to act like she's watching the paper like a hawk but she's desperate to figure out what's been done to her best friend. She doesn't think Jiraya will notice anyway, he's mumbling about things like 'compressed matrix' and 'even numbered anchor placement' but you never know with ninja of his level.

The toad sage has sketched a diamond with a circle in the center. The circle is filled with smaller circles and there are two dots on above and below it. Jirayia flips to another sheet of paper and starts to sketch something much more complicated, but Rin can still see echoes of the first sketch in it. The center is still five concentric circles and outside all the complicated delicate line work are four large collections of swirls placed on the outside of the seal ninety degrees apart from each other. Rin wonders if the large swirls are the 'anchors' the toad sage was muttering about.

Jiraiya puts down the pen and removes his hand from Obito. He squints down and the more complicated sketch for a second before turning to Rin."This seal looks like it was placed with some kind of kekkei genkai I've never seen before and it has safeguards against being removed by someone without that kekkei genkai" Rin grits her teeth in frustration and Jirayia counties "I'd like to see how it reacts when part of it is destroyed. So I'd like to examine and map the seal on your heart please" Jiraya half states and half asks.

Rin nods silently and reluctantly lets go of Obito's hand to move back over to Jiraya. She kneels down in front of him and pulls her borrowed yukata to the side revealing the fresh keloid scar in the middle of her chest.

Given the toad sages reputation as a super pervert Rin half expects him to do something awful like ask her take of the rest of her yukata, but he just pulls out another blank sheet of paper and sets his hand on the left side of her scar. Rin carefully stays still as forgein chakra flares just above her skin. She notes Jiraya's fire affinity and secondary wind affinity as she tries to subtly crane her neck to see the paper he's drawing her seal on, but it's out of her field of vision.

Finally the toad sage removes his hand and stops sketching. He doesn't even make a tasteless comment about getting to touch her breasts, just looks down at the paper Rin still can't see.

"Huh it looks like the seal is unraveling, this one's way less complicated than the one on your friend, but it's hard to tell what it looked like originally." Jiraya has picked up the paper and is holding if close to his face.

Rin resists the urge to snatch it from him and instead asks "Can I see that?" It's a rhetorical question, the seal's on _her _heart she'll make him show it to her eventually.

He hands her the sheet of paper and Rin finally gets a look at the seal that almost forced her to destroy her home. It doesn't really resemble Obito's, the central circles are still present but the outermost one is broken and only one large swirl is present. The delicate linework on Obito's seal is larger on hers and some of it just looks like mindless scribbling. Most of the seal on the right side is missing entirely making the whole thing look unbalanced only a few squiggles extending off to the right side of the concentric circles .

"This looks unbalanced?" Rin muses out loud.

"Yeah! unraveling seals are really dangerous, especially ones intended to alter the mind, they often change thought patterns in ways they weren't meant to and can cause lots of really bad side effects, I've seen one where a guy had seal on his tongue that was unraveling and it made his brain tell him to stop breathing" Jiraya is babbling a little and doesn't seem to realize he's talking to someone with an unraveling mind control seal on her heart. Finally he looks up at Rins horrified expression and cuts himself off. "So obviously we need to figure out how to get it off you as quickly as possible, it doesn't seem to be communicating with your brain right now but that link might start up again as it unravels further" Jiraiya continues after an awkward pause.

"I know how we can get it off" Rin says suddenly and both Shizune and Jirayia look at her. Rin sets the paper down and continues as calmly as she can "The chidori was particularly effective but Minato-sensei's rasengan should work just as well, assuming you know that jutsu?"

"Off course I do, he's my student!" Jiraya yelps, offened, at the same time as Tsunade shouts "Fuck no!" from across the room.

"You don't have to heal it, The bijuu inside me can easily do that and we can go outside if you don't want use to get blood on the floor in here" Rin reasons calmly, trying not to think about a jutsu that can easily drill through rock being used on her chest. Isobu stirs inside her and she can feel their concern at the thought she just suppressed.

_It'll be fine, it's the fastest way to get the seal off _Rin reassures them.

_I know, but this sounds like it could be even more destructive than the chidori _Isobu says

_It might be but I don't want this damn seal on me for a second longer than it has to be _Rin says trying not to think about what a rasengan will do to her rib cage. At this moment a finger poking her nose brings her back to reality, he hand twitches toward her absent weapons pouch and then she realises it was Jiraiya who poked her and he's still saying something to her

"Oi! you back with us?" Jiraiya asks, Tsunade is peering over his shoulder at her having crossed the room at some point. Rin dips her head in ascent, nervous under the Senju's princess's sudden direct attention. "Ok good,you kind of zoned out for a second there" Jirayia says.

"You wouldn't respond to any verbal stimulation so Jiraya poked you. Do you need me to take a look at your head?" Tsunade-hime adds in. Rin quickly shakes her head, she needs to work on multitasking while she talks to Isobu.

"I was just discussing the plan with the Sanbi" she explains and the two Sannin look at her like she just announced she was defecting to Iwa.

" You seem to trust your Bijuu an awful lot, you know Bijuu are deceitful and evil by nature, right?" Jirayia says slowly. Rin scowles at him.

"This one isn't! It was trusting my Bijuu that saved my life and got me and Obito here" Rin says vehemently.

"Right, ok" Jiraya says though it's clear he doesn't agree with her. Tsunade just scowles right back at her and straightens up. "Anyway, Hime here thinks it would be safer for me to use my hair senbon to destroy the affected area of your heart"

"That is if you're sure you're bijuu can heal it" Tsunade puts in. Isobu isn't 'her' Bijuu but she's sure they can heal it, they did it once before after all. Isobu agrees wordlessly from the depths of her stomach, they seem proud at how much trust she's put in their ability.

"Yes, I'm sure. I just need to stay perfectly still while they do it" Rin afferms.

"Why?" Jiraya asks her.

"Their chakra is similar to nature chakra and since I don't have the right chakra nature to balance out their chakra, their chakra will merge with the water chakra in my coils and turn me to coral if I move" Rin explains quickly. Tsunade hums, and Jiraya nods his head slowly. "Any way can we remove the seal now?" Rin asks impatiently.

"It might be better to rest first so that your chakra reserves are full" Tsunade says. Rin doesn't see what effect full chakra reserves will have on Isobu's healing ability, she wants to get this done before she has the chance to chicken out.

"I'd like to do it before the seal has a chance to deteraite anymore" Rin states, Tsunade looks considering and Jirayia nods slightly.

"That would probably be for the best, Hime?" Jiraiya says turning to look at Tsunade.

"Fine, go! get out of my room and clean up before you come back" Tsunade replies and turns back to her sake bottle. Rin scramble to scoop up her weapons pouch and her pile of ruined unties her med pouch from her bare thigh and pulls her spandex shorts back on under the yukata and Jirayia surprisingly turns around when he sees what she's doing. Shizune is preoccupied trying to take the sake away from Tsunade-hime and neither over as she unties the yukata and throws it on the futon, pulls back on her ripped mesh armour and throws her stolen Happi over top. She has nothing to tie it shut with so she just leaves it hanging open as she ties her weapons pouch to her thigh. Rin decides to leave her med pouch behind, she doesn't want it too get bloody. She slips her feet back into the straw sandals and leads the way out the door.

Jiraiya follows after a moment, he has the lavender yukata draped over one arm. "Hime will want you put this back on before we come back, you're lucky she didn't burn your old clothes" Jirayia says when she looks at him questioningly.

"Oh" says dumbly, she feels much better with her mesh armour and weapons pouch back on, she wonders if she can clean them off enough that they don't bother Tsunade with the smell of blood. She hopes Tsunade-sama doesn't burn Obito's yukata and the oil skins while they're gone


	9. Chapter 9

Removing the seal doesn't take long, Jiryia makes them walk out of town because he 'doesn't want civilians to see him stabbing a child in the middle of the street'. Rin is anxious to get the seal off and get back to Obito, but she agrees. They walk out into a canyon that's hidden from the town's sightlines and Rin pulls of her stolen Happi and mesh armour since she doesn't feel like ripping more holes in her clothes.

Jirayia warns her before he shoots a concentrated barrage of razor sharp hair through her chest. The pain and momentum of the senbon knocks her to the ground and she feels her heart stopping for the second time that week. Rin reaches for Isobu's chakra and they willingly give it to her, this time she doesn't even need to enter the seal space.

The bleeding stops within seconds, but Rin still knows she's lost an unhealthy amount of blood, unlike with the chidori this technique did not cauterize her wounds. Within a few minutes the damage is completely erased except for another scar, this one isn't even raised and looks years old.

Rin sits up as soon as Isobu's chakra fades and starts pulling her mesh armor back on, she's left a large pool of blood behind but she doesn't care, she can sense no traces of the control seal left on her heart. Jiryia is looking at with concern and she directs questioning look at him while she picks up her Happi from the dusty ground

"It took you longer to heal than I expected" he explains.

"The seals completely gone though, I can sense it" Rin says as she puts her Happi on and starts walking back to town.

She'd wanted to shushin on the way out of town but Jiryia had stopped her as the Konoha version of shushin might be recognized and performing any ninjutsu would mark them as ninja. She wishes she could body flicker right back into Tsunade's room at the onsen, she wants to check on Obito.

It takes forever to get back to the Onsen and when they get back Jirayia pushes tsunade's yukata into her arms and makes her go to the women's bath before she heads back to Tsunade's room. He says he'll book a room for her and Obito and she nods dumbly, She hopes he won't peek at her while she bathes, she's no confident enough in her sensing ability to think she could catch a legendary sannin who didn't want to be caught. Then again jiraiya is famous for being _caught_ peeping in the women's baths, there's no way he's that bad at stealth. Maybe he gets caught on purpose?

Rin has no time to examine this thought, she's finished undressing and putting her clothes in a locker. She should leave her weapons pouch there too, she's supposed to pass for a civilian, there'd be no way to explain carrying her weapons into the bath. But she feels terribly exposed without them, even the thought of being naked and weaponless sends a shot of adrenaline through her system,

she clutches the towel tighter around her, the faster she gets clean the sooner she can get upstairs and check on Obito.

She managed to take her mesh armor off without panicking, she was even weaponless in tsunade's room earlier. Why is it getting too her now?

She wishes she could just put back on her clothes and go back to Obito's side, but her spandex shorts are soaked in fresh blood, even the bandages she used to tie her weapon pouch on are soaked with both fresh and dried blood. She needs to keep the sanin on her side and Tsunade-sama has practically ordered her to change out of her bloodied clothes when she first ariverried. She hesitates for another second, the blood on her back stating to stain the towel and isobu stirs from the depths of her mind

_I'll protect you, I can heal any wound you might sustain, and you could sense anyone approaching anyway. _They reassure her.

Rin tries not to think of the fact that she's not sure if she could sense an approaching Zetsu clone and kiri-hunter nin are known for being experts at hiding their chakra. That's how she got kidnapped in the first place.

That thought keeps her frozen on the floor in front of her locker full of bloody clothes for a few panicked minutes. Eventually she forces herself to move, she needs to see Obito, make sure she didn't dream up the fact that he is still alive. Maybe he'll even have woken up

Evauntaly she twists her hair up into a bun and sticks a senbon through it, it might look a little out of place to a civilian but hopefully they'll just assume it's a metal hair stick and she can sense that the bath on the woman's side is unoccupied anyway

She takes one of the fastest baths of her life, scrubbing her bloody skin and hair clean and then watching the watching the discolored water drain away, a civilian comes in just as she's entering the hot spring and she's glad she'd switched out the blooded towel for a clean one. She soaks in the hot springs for just long enough so as not to look odd to the old woman now sitting on the stool in the wash area

In the end she only stays in the water for a carefully counted 63 seconds before she hurries off, the need to check on her best friend driving her away from the admittedly soothing hot water. The old woman smiles at her as she rushes past. Rin tries to smile back politely, she thinks it probably comes out as a tight lipped grimace but the civilian doesn't comment

She quickly throws on Tsunade's yukata, she doesn't have an obi and her clothes are all covered with traces of old blood so she just holds it shut and wraps up her soaked clothes in the mostly clean stollen happi. Rin rushes up the stairs in bare feet and knocks on Tsunade's door anxiously.


	10. Chapter 10

Shizune lets her in, Tsunade is sitting on the futon, still drinking.

The sanin turns and wrinkles her nose at Rin when she sees her. "Throw that out" she commands gesturing at the bundle of clothes Rin is holding

"I need my weapons! And my mesh-" Rin starts to protest

"It's covered in blood. take you weapons out, I have spare pouch. And just chuck the rest, I can loan you armor and clothes as long as get rid of all that blood soaked shit, your friends stuff too"

Rin reluctantly drops the bundle to the ground and fishes out her weapons pouch,

"Shizune, take that outside and burn it" Tsunade says nonchalantly as soon as the clothes leave Rin's grasp

"Wait! We shouldn't waste clothes, you could just put them through the wash"

"Are you kidding, bloody clothes in the Onsen's laundry load, not to mention ninja ones! Besides washing doesn't get rid of blood stains" Tsunade growls back

Rin wants to continue protesting, to ask where her and obito are supposed to get clothes that actually fit them without any money, but she realizes she shouldn't be arguing with the legendary ninja who has agreed to help them and already healed her best friend.

Tsunade is offering to loan her and obito armor just so she can keep them from wearing bloody, ripped up clothes. It's actually quite the generous thing to do, the only thing Tsunade's asked from them so far is to be not be covered in blood, or even a few traces of old blood stains. It's a bit of a strange demand but Rin can do it, as long as she gets to keep her weapons and med kit

It might be a good opportunity to dispose of the forehead protector Obito scratched, but she knows Kakashi's hitai-ate used to be his mother's. He'll probably want it back even if Obito has made it into the mark of traitor.

so she carefully wraps the head band around the meal of the hitai-ake as she removes it from her weapon pouch and then lines up the context of her weapons pouch and sorts them automatically.

an incomplete set of two dozen unpoised senbon, three are missing not counting the one that's still in her hair, but they are all in decent condition. Seven senbon laced with paralytic left and three of the ones with Uchina-san best blend of painless, fast acting neurotoxin. The pale blue silk ribbon tying those three into their pouch is a familiar comforting texture against her fingers as she lays it down. Those had been satisfying to hit the kiri nin with.

Three kunai, she definitely needs to restock, if she can even do that in Nagai. A full set of shuriken, freshly sharpened and oiled. Then finally her whetstone and oilcloth, She'd used up all her ninja wire and explosive tags sitting traps for her mission before she'd even been kidnapped.

She puts her empty weapon's pouch back in the pile of bloody clothes and let Shizune gather them up.

"Get those too" Tsunade jerks her head at the oilskins bundled up in the corner

"Wait! There's stuff I need in there" Rin says before shizune can move a muscle.

Tsunade raises an eyebrow at her "what could you possible need from a pile of used bandages and bloody ripped up clothes?"

"My med pouch" Rin says frowning at the Senju princess, she also wants to make sure her apron doesn't get burned and she feels really bad about stealing from that ame village only to destroy the things she'd taken a few days later

Tsunade sighs and turns back to her sake, she doesn't say anything else so rin scops up her med pouch and the remains of her medic's apron,

"Can I keep to whole pouch? I don't want to unpack all of it and it's not really that dirty" Rin says

"No way! That thing is covered in- What the fuck is the tattered blood covered rag, theirs no what that is esantal part of your med kit" Tsunade has caught sight of her ruined apron.

"That's my medic's apron, It's a traditional item from my clan that Identifies me as a field medic" Rin says through tight lips as she starts to unpack her med pouch

"There's now way you're keeping that, why the hell do you need it"

"It's from my clan" Rin explain scowling at the sanin, not mentioning that she's never met another member clan and her apron was made according to the specifications of her clan's records by her civilian mother, "Jiraiya says he's booking Obito and me a separate room, You won't even ever have to see it again, for that matter, why can't we just keep our old clothes in the other room? I can wash them discreetly latter"

" No way, you'll just end up wearing blood stained clothes around me later, and where exactly are you going to wash them? There's no natural water sources around here, laundry service costes extra because of the water it takes" Tsunade scolds.

"Fine, I see your point. As long as we can borrow some clothes and you let me keep my medic's apron." Rin concedes as politely as she can.

Tsunade scowls fiercely at the tattered remains of her apron but nods her head.

Her med pouch takes a lot longer to unpack. Tsunade watches her the whole time with a critical eye which Rin tries to ignore. She unpacks her antidotes first, She has all the antivenoms to snake and seacreture venoms that are commonly used in ninja poison. That's thanks to Uchina-san, Kushina's genin team mate specializes in those types of poisons and naturally stocks all their antidotes. She only has few antidotes for plant based poisons but luckily those don't see as much use in ninja combat, they're much more useful for assination's.

She pulls out her two syringes of local anesthetic and and her half full bottle of disinfectant. Next comes her large collection of antibiotic creams and pills to fight infection, she'd already used her touquet on Obito but she also unpacks her spare one and a few bandaids and moleskin. She'd used up all her bandages, it's kind of embarrassing actually. She fishes out her large tube of burn salve and the case of smaller syringes she keeps at the bottom of her pouch, Inside are her intramuscular antibiotics, empty syringes which she can fill with an antivenom or antidote if she needs to and vaccines in case her team needs to cross into an area with a prevalent disease that Konoha doesn't cover with it's routine shots, underneath the case is her folded up sling.

"Field medic huh?" Tsunade says as Rin is laying out the sling, Rin tries not to flinch at Tsunade's words. She may have found the Sanin unexpectedly gruff and much more prone to chugging alcohol from the bottle then she expected but this was still her idol, the woman she'd always wanted to meet for years. The senju princess wasn't anything like Rin had pictured her but her healing was just as impressive as Rin would have expected. But Rin can feel the unspoken question in those words, If she was a field medic why couldn't she heal Obito's fever herself, or have just prevented the infection in the first place?

Rin had always wanted to meet Tsunade so she could tell her about how she'd mastered the slug princess's mystical palm jutsu.

But now that's no longer true.

She doesn't reply and instead finishes unpacking her medpack, pulling the elastic bandages she uses to support injured joints out of the side pouch and reluctantly handing the empty pouch to Shizune.

"That's a fairly adequately stocked med kit, where are your bandage?" The sanin says

"I ran out, used them all up on Obito" Rin says meekly not meeting the sanin's eyes. At least the women isn't pressing about her silence in response to the earlier question

"Hmm, you should always keep your bandages in sealing scrolls so you can stock as many as you need without running out of space" the slug princess advises casually and takes another sip of sake from her cup as Shizine slips out of the room and carefully slides the shoji shut behind her

Rin nods silently and commits the tip to memory, It's good advice if only she could afford decent sealing scrolls.

" here's my spare weapons pouch" Tsunade chucks something at her as she speaks, Rin barely manages to catch it before in hits her squarely in the face. "And an obi Shizune said you could borrow" the fabric doesn't quite make it to Rin despite the force the sannin tosses it with, it instead floats down on top of the sling laid out in front of her. It's a full size obi made of stiff fabric, the kind the requires a knot Rin doesn't know how to tie.

"I don't know how to put this on" Rin says tentatively.

"Shizune can show you how when she gets back" The sanin says "She wears them every day after all, I can't be bothered" Tsunade yawns and refills her cup.

"Ok, thank you." Rin says awkwardly and turns her attention to the pouch in her hands. It's not a standard weapon's pouch. The patterned fabric on the outside covers leather reinforced with metal giving it the appearance of a harmless purse a civilian might wear. The inside has shuriken hooks on one side and a separate pouch with tiny pockets made for vials.

Rin starts putting her antivenoms in the tiny pockets. Surprisingly they all fit, she even has few pockets left to tuck her local anesthetic into. She easily fills the shuriken hooks, there's space for a full dozen, and puts her kunai in the bottom of the pouch, she manages to fit her case of syringes into the side with the vials quite comfortably. She puts her collection of both plain and laced senbon on top of the kunai for easy access but then she's run out of space.

Most of her med kit is still laid out in front of her along with her whetstone and oil cloth, she doesn't want to ask anything else of the senju princess but she is unwilling to give up any of her medical supplies

"Do you have another spare bag I could carry my med kit in?" Rin asks reluctantly after trying a few different ways of arranging her stuff in the weapon's pouch

"Huh?" the sannin rolls over from her position on the futon, she'd stretched out and propped her chin on her hand as the awkward silence stretched between them "Oh yeah, don't worry I'll bully Jiraiya into finding something for you" the senju princess takes another sip of sake and rolls back over to face the wall. Rin sets the full weapon's pouch down and frowns down at her hands, suddenly she doesn't quite know what to do with them. She uses one to pull the united yukata tighter around her and looks around the room.

Obito is breathing evenly from where someone has moved him to the futon. She wonders if it was Shizune or Tsunade who thought to move him there while she was away, she's grateful one of them thought of his comfort. She focuses on observing the chakra in his coils, waiting for either Shizune or Jiraya to return so she doesn't have to explain to Tsunade-sama about how she wasn't a medic anymore, how she had dreamed of reaching the other women's level of expertise in healing but now she has been told she can't hope to do that, has lost any skill in medical jutsu and chakra control that she had trained so hard for.

Obito's chakra is a strange mix of the fire affinity she recognizes from when they were younger and the mokuton like chakra she had thought she sensed from guruguru. But the mokuton chakra doesn't feel like guruguru's chakra, it still moves at the same frequency as obito's, fades seamlessly into his fire natured chakra. His chakra still feels the same way it always did, it's a familiar feeling she's had memorised since childhood, it's just that he seems to have two different affinities now. His affinities blend together in way Rin hasn't seen before, even Kushina-san's wind and water affinity felt like wind nature chakra with just a trace of water. Obito had almost an equal part of both, if Rin had to guess she would say there was a bit more of the new affinity, the one that felt so similar to a hashirama tree.

She thinks of mentioning the difference in Obito's chakra to Tsunade, just to have something to say but at that moment Jirayia burst into the room.

"I booked you kids a room, Minato owes me big for this"


End file.
